How to Choose Tiles

When it comes to choosing tiles, there a few questions to ask, the main one being: what best suits you and your family’s needs?

Consider the following:

What room are we doing?

Do we want wall or floor tiles or both?

If both, do we want them to match or complement?

Do we need the floor tiles to be hardwearing or are we more likely to be walking on them in slippers or barefoot?

Do we have a pet to consider? Or children?

These answers will direct you to the type of tile you need.

Next you should start looking for inspiration! Our trend edits and real homes features are great places to pick-up fresh ideas for you project.

If you think about the look and feel of the rest of your home, what type of look do you tend to veer towards?

We find there are five main looks people tend to choose:

Clean, Crisp & Contemporary

Rustic & Old Style

Simple Neutral Tones

Making a Style Statement

A Complete Mixture

Then, what sorts of colours do you tend to use?

Lots Of Colour

Subtle Colours

Shades Of Grey

Shades Of Beige

White

Black

Mainly Neutral With A Dash Of Colour

By answering these two simple questions, we are able to paint a picture of the kind of look you might like.

For instance, if you have told us you are tiling a kitchen wall, you like a rustic style and you like subtle colours we could recommend this:

But if you said you like a rustic style but also like to make a statement we might go with this one:

So for someone tiling a hallway who likes to make a style statement we might recommend a tile from our Feature Floor’s collection.

Or sometimes you may like to make a statement but have done that on your walls so would go with something more subtle on the floor, like a wood effect tile:

It’s about finding what is right for you. Just because you are choosing a tile and ultimately you might be shopping for tiles because you want a hard wearing floor covering or you want a waterproof area in your bathroom, you shouldn’t lose sight of who you are and what you like.

It is possible to achieve the functional whilst maintaining the inspirational and ultimately have a home that you love and deserve.

So, key things to remember

Stick to what you like, don’t be led down the ‘I like that but I’m not going to use it because I might go off it’ path

In the case of tiles, size really doesn’t matter. If you want to use a large tile in a small bathroom do it – the less grout lines the better – this will actually make your room look bigger. Equally, if you want to use a small mosaic tile do it, or even mix sizes. It’s your home, no one else’s.

Some tiles are only suitable for walls and this completely depends on the thickness and durability, however, unless it’s enormous, there is no reason whatsoever that you can’t use a floor tile on a wall if you want to do that. Increasingly a lot of tiles are multi-use meaning that they can be used on both walls and floors for a more seamless effect.